Moments when a piece of entertainment completely rocked you.

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah, second that. Started reading the manga now, though not very far in, looks like the anime was scene for scene almost identical, at least at first.

[Stahlseele]

The Movie Redline.
It basically killed a Studio, but it is pretty good watching.
A completely over the top sci fi racing anime MOVIE not series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktotgj7 ... aWxsZWQ%3D

[angelfromanotherpin]

I was strongly considering doing a Let's Play thread of the Star Trek Lower Decks Warp Your Own Way CYOA comic, but it's not really a game, just explorable interactive fiction. It is, however, super good. Like the show, the references to previous material can be a bit thick on the ground, but if you can manage that it's a really solid thinky Trek story that effectively blends comedy, mystery, horror, and heroism.

[deaddmwalking]

Re-reading Catch-22

The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

[deaddmwalking]

Some things a man has to do, so he does 'em.

So I just watched Winchester '73. I had seen the title pop up when I was scanning through suggestions, but even though I like Westerns the title didn't really draw me in. I did notice it was highly rated, so it was at least on my radar, but when I saw it as part of the Criterion Collection at Barnes & Noble that raised the interest level. When I realized it starred Jimmy Stewart it shot up to the top of the list. I like the actor in just about everything he's done, and he's in the classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (which also inspired a fun song by the same title - it was finished too late to be included in the movie) and 'Bandalero! - a fun movie where he stars opposite Dean Martin and Raquel Welch. In that movie he meets the executioner on his way to mete out justice to his black-sheep brother (Martin) and he assumes the executioners identity and springs him. Then when the sheriff is chasing his brother, he takes advantage and robs the town bank. In that one he was playing a little against type.

Spoilers ahead for a 75 year old movie.

In any case, I really had no idea what to expect. I have mentioned elsewhere that I've been checking out a TV show called Dead Man's Gun, an anthology series that is supposed to be tied together by someone inheriting a particular gun in every episode, but in actuality the links are pretty tenuous. This is the movie that the show probably wishes it could be.

The movie starts with Jimmy Stewart riding into Dodge City, Kansas on the 4th of July. Wyatt Earp (a much paunchier and avuncular version than Kurt Russell's in Tombstone takes their weapons when they run into the man they've been pursuing. With the law preventing the settling of an unknown score the two end up dominating a sharp-shooting competition with the prize being an 1873 Winchester (a repeating rifle and one knows as the Rifle that Won the West - it features in the book Empire of the Summer Moon a well-researched book about the Comanche and the closing of the west). Anyway, Jimmy Stewart wins the rifle, but he's ambushed by his quarry who rides off with it but without their weapons and ammo. Stewart and his friend give chase.

The rifle passes from hand to hand. First 'Dutch' Henry Brown is forced to sell it to an Indian Trader who is planning on selling repeating firearms to the Indians. By the time 'Dutch' puts a bullet in him to get it back he's already dead - scalped by the Indians he was selling to - and the rifle is in the hands of Young Bull (played by Hollywood Golden era heart throb and closeted homosexual Rock Hudson). Stewart and other travelers (including a lady that made a living playing piano in Dodge City) find themselves with the Pennsylvania Ninth surrounded by Commanche and facing long odds. The repeating rifles the non-cavalry have with them end up making a decisive difference. Stewart rides off before he can be reunited with his prize Winchester, and it falls into the hands of another of the defenders. He has plans to meet up with 'Waco' Johnny Dean - the fastest draw in Texas - who oozes danger like Billy Drago from Brisco County Jr. When they do meet up, he ends up dead and his sharp-witted fiance ends up riding with him as he meets up with 'Dutch' to pull a stagecoach/back robbery. Stewart, who's been tracking Dutch, ends up arriving just in time to break the robbery up, but 'Dutch' escapes. By this point we know that 'Dutch' killed Stewart's father, but there's one more twist - perhaps best alluded to by the Marty Robbins cowboy classic Tall Handsome Stranger.

We've gone from Dodge City to the Sonoran desert and experienced some classic vistas (in black and white).

Compared to Bandalero! it's a more satisfying ending. I think this is a movie that can stand up with High Noon on any list of the greatest westerns ever. Interestingly, it has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score compared to a 95% for High Noon. It was directed by Anthony Mann (probably best known for El-Cid starring Charleston Heston, or maybe for being replaced by Stanley Kubrick as the director of Spartacus after disagreements with star Kirk Douglass). Apparently that's a director that is lionized and known as a director's director.

From a Review by Kelly Vance, 2004
Winchester ’73 contains just about every one of the fundamental ingredients of the classic Western. It has Wyatt Earp, grizzled old coots in coonskin caps, plenty of saloon surliness, men skeet-shooting silver dollars, a card-sharping Indian trader with a beaverskin top hat (note the way he shuffles his cards so that the ace of spades always stays on top), and, of course, hostile natives on horseback. There are Civil War yarns (Lin and High-Spade fought for the Johnny Rebs), picked-on homesteaders, the humiliation of a coward, a foiled bank robbery, saguaro cactus in the Arizona desert, and a dancehall girl named Lola, to whom Lin shows gallantry (she’s played, in an appealing performance, by Shelley Winters).

There’s also a ricochet-filled shootout amid boulders, just like in The Naked Spur. The main desperados are named Dutch Henry Brown and Waco Johnny Dean. Rock Hudson appears as an Indian chief, and Tony Curtis breezes by as a young cavalry soldier. Sounds very much like a list of cowboy-flick clichés, except in Mann’s hands they come alive as if for the very first time. Ultimately it’s Stewart’s acting that ropes us in, a portrait of a man seething inside who still has enough folksy politeness left to chuckle at a group of Kansas kids admiring the famed rifle. Winchester ’73 is simply one of the finest Westerns ever made, in a class with the best of Ford and Hawks.

I made a mistake not watching this one sooner.

[Thaluikhain]

Been watching the LA by Night actual play of VTM 5, season 1, and it starts off a little slow, but gets going well. The best parts are where there's no dice rolling and it's telling a collaborative story rather than playing a game, mind.

[deaddmwalking]

Spider-Noir (Amazon Prime) is pretty good. Nicholas Cage is in his 'trying weird accents' phase but the accent he uses for this is much better than the one he tried for Gunslingers. Partway through the film they show him learning that accent from a specific film (explained as part of physical therapy from an earlier injury). Some of his 'spider-movements' are also weird. So while I'm not sure Nicholas Cage is the BEST choice of casting, I think it actually works - he's not exactly doing his Humphrey Bogart impression (which is what I suspected he was doing), but ultimately you need a Humphrey Bogart like character to sell the conceit.

[Bigdy McKen]

Been watching the LA by Night actual play of VTM 5, season 1, and it starts off a little slow, but gets going well. The best parts are where there's no dice rolling and it's telling a collaborative story rather than playing a game, mind.

I’ve been watching the current season of Dimension 20 on dropout tv, entitled “City Council of Darkness”.

It’s a vampire the masquerade game, but the part that really tickles me is that it’s set near my hometown in southern Oregon.

Either latter editions of V:tM have been really streamlined, or they’re using some kind of homebrew system.

[deaddmwalking]

So I just watched the A-Team movie (2010). I had passed on it when it came out - I was born in '79 so I grew up with the A-Team, and I wasn't convinced that the people making the movie understood what made it great, and I honestly wasn't ready to see other actors take on those roles. Still, when I saw a Blu-Ray copy for $3.95 at a used book store, I decided to pick it up and make a point of watching it.

I really liked it. Obviously there were a number of changes - instead of the Vietnam war their military exploits were in the Iraq War. In the original show they were on a mission to rob the Bank of Hanoi, but their orders and commanding officer were eliminated, making them appear to be AWOL and working to enrich themselves. The show, of course, begins after they escape to the Los Angeles underground and everything in Vietnam is just background.

In this movie, the 'crime they did not commit' is a major part of the movie, and most of the rest of the movie is focused on them uncovering the conspiracy and holding those responsible accountable.

For people familiar with the show, the story beats will seem familiar, but that's not actually a bad thing. What we're left with is a decent action-movie with a lot of classic call-backs that fans of the show will probably enjoy.

From a gaming perspective, there's a couple of things to recommend it. First off, it's a team-based movie. Every character has to be a 'capable combatant', but they also have to have other skills that make them useful. Hannibal is the strategics, Face is the fixer, Murdoch is the pilot, and B.A. is a driver/mechanic/muscle. They all contribute in different ways but also all have roles in combat. Perhaps, more interestingly, the movie uses some of the 'heist' format where we see the plan being laid out and then seeing the plan being executed, with 'surprises' having been counted on and countered. Mostly.

The only thing that I was disappointed in was the CGI in the climax. Action takes place at a dock with a container ship. Containers are pretty easy to animate, but they used too much of it. While the individual containers mostly looked 'realistic', their movement and 'weight' did not. Or at least, several times during that scene the VFX let the movie down. But B.A. launched himself off a motorcycle into a flying tackle - so that probably made up for it.

Okay, to be fair, the MacGuffin is pretty contrived. Instead of the Bank of Hanoi, they have to recover a U.S. Mint Press with all the associated plates that would allow 'bad actors' to print unlimited legal tender. That said, within the context of the movie (and the motives of everyone involved) it makes sense why this would be something that everybody would want (including the CIA for their own uses).

I really should have watched it in theaters.

[deaddmwalking]

As a parent, one of the responsibilities that I accept with pride is trying to expose my children to culturally relevant media from before their lifetime. I've only had mixed success, but I'm always pleased when my children seek out a movie to watch it with me. Recently, my daughter did this with Robocop.

Unfortunately, she borrowed the 2014 version from the library in part because she could not tell by looking at the cover which one was the original. By a quirk of fate, I had actually bought both the original (1987) and the remake (2014) used for like $3 each. We watched the original first a few weeks ago. Yesterday/today we finally sat down to watch the 2014 version.

Now, the original has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 84% compared to the newer version's 50%. After I had explained that it was a remake she was a little reluctant to watch it, but now that we have, she likes it better than the original. And I gotta admit that she has a point.

When Robocop came out in 1987, reviews were mixed. A lot of people were upset by the graphic violence and didn't really understand the satirical subtext. Verhoeven's Starship Troopers had a similar reception. I think that José Padilha's Robocop deserves a second look as well. Near-future trappings aside, science fiction usually speaks about the society we're in and the trajectory we're on. In some ways, the original Robocop seemed prescient when describing the Detroit of the early aughts. The consensus review of the newer one: "While it's far better than it could have been, José Padilha's RoboCop remake fails to offer a significant improvement over the original."

The thing is, it isn't a scene-for-scene remake of the original. It shares a number of elements in common, but this movie is specifically about the automation of warfare and removing the human element from state-sponsored violence. Essentially, the movie was looking at Predator and Reaper drones and projecting those developments into the near future. In 2014, I think there were a lot of people who didn't believe that a future like that would or EVER COULD arrive.

Well, after 5 years of war in Ukraine it's happening. From an article in the New York Times:

“This is a risk for the whole world,” said Col. Serhiy Minaiev, the commander of air defenses in Zaporizhzhia. “In a few years, we will be living in a ‘Terminator’ movie. It’s no joke. Machines are making decisions to strike.”

With elements like Samuel L. Jackson's Fox style pundit show and killer robots, and questions of whether the algorithms can overwrite our humanity, my daughter sees a world she knows reflected more accurately than the one from 1987. The critics made the mistake of comparing this film to the original, rather than considering it as an homage taking elements from the original to speak to the world outside their window. Watching it as a warning, unheeded, hits different in 2026.

I think that reevaluation is starting to take place. You don't have to take my word for it. Here's a review by James Croot for the release to Prime Video.

What could have been a depressing assault on the childhood of those who grew up in the 1980s was instead one of the best action-sci-fi movies since Minority Report over a decade earlier.

I still like the original better, but I think this one merits a watch - not as a remake, but as a reimagining of the story applying the basic elements to tell its own version of what it means to be human.

Edit:

I wanted to respond to something from a 2014 review by Brent McKnight at 'The Last Thing I see':

The lack of a central villain keeps RoboCop from having much focus or a mission; the bad-guy-by-committee thing they have going on doesn’t work. The main criminal is toothless and generic, a neutered version of Clarence Boddicker. OmniCorp isn’t so much evil and out for world domination as they are a bunch of dicks that want to make a lot of money. By extension, CEO Raymond Sellers (Michael Keaton, who is actually the best part of the movie) is in the same boat. He’s not the worst person in the world, he only wants a huge profit by any means necessary, and that middle of the road stance makes his turn at the end awkward and unearned.

One of my problems with super-hero movies is the idea that all problems can be solved by punching some villain hard enough in the face. Robocop (2014) doesn't do that - the system is the problem. What McKnight is missing is that the lack of focus comes from corruption at every level of the system. What would have been MORE HONEST is if the powers that be decided to abandon the program because they'd realize that an unfeeling automaton that fairly upholds the laws is more of a threat to them than it is to street-thugs.

What I would consider a legitimate criticism is that Robocop does run up a significant body-count. While they are 100% people who are actively shooting at him, none of the crimes they're accused of warrant the death-penalty. The massive blind-spot the movie has relates to Robocop 'trying to do the right thing' as a justification for 'excessive violence'. Maybe in the next Robocop reboot.

[deaddmwalking]

Stretching the definition of 'entertainment', I'm having more fun than I should with the Biergarten Collection from Costco.

When I lived in Iowa City, I completed the Old Chicago World Beer Tour, earning my name on a plaque in the 'Hall of Foam'. I've since learned that the location permanently closed in 2022, so I guess any record of it is gone with it. Still, trying 110 different beers (over many, many, visits) gave me a good sense of what types of beers I like and what types of beers I don't. Among the beers that I'm generally happy with are a lot of German (and German-style) beers.

This beer purchase is like a mini-tour of a single country. So far I've had the St. M Bock (rich and warming with notes of country bread, dried fruits, and spice. Full-bodied, smooth and balanced) and the Irlbacher Alt Irlbacher (chestnut color with toasted nuts and molasses. A medium body brew with hints of chocolate and toffee with a dry pleasing finish). I like that the box includes an overview of the beers included - I wish it had information on the breweries and geographical locations, but I guess that's just information that I'll have to look up (conveniently on the website linked above).

Drinking 24 beers of the same brand makes you Hank Hill - drinking a variety makes you a connoisseur.